


the trouble might drag you down

by goodbyechunkylemonmilk



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Alcohol, M/M, Past Abuse, Pre-Slash, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 04:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1291396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodbyechunkylemonmilk/pseuds/goodbyechunkylemonmilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy realizes, the night after Sam’s run away, that he needs a new name. “Jimmy” sounds young and stupid and weak, and even worse when he adds “Kirk” at the end to try to fix it. It’s the name of the sort of boy whose mom is never home and whose brother leaves and whose father is probably disappointed with him from beyond the grave. He decides, finally, on “Jim,” and on never looking back, since no one else has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the trouble might drag you down

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Home" by Phillip Phillips

“Aw,  _Jimmy_ ,” Bones says, and it’s supposed to be a joke because Jim’s whining about being hypoed even more than usual. It’s a joke, but all Jim can hear is Frank’s voice: the grudging fondness he earned at the expense of his brother, and the slight sneer he was too young and too unwilling to acknowledge. He freezes, holds himself as still as possible because the other option is slamming his unsteady fist down on the desk and storming out, and he doesn’t want to be that person. Bones’ anger is safe, understated and constant like waves at low-tide or the hum of the Corvette once he accepted it was too late to turn back. Bones’ anger is affectionate in a way he didn’t know it could be. But Jim’s isn’t like that; he can’t stop yelling once he gets started, and he has none of Frank’s blood in him but still swears his voice is there, lurking in the undertones of his own.

 He takes a deep breath, head down, and tries not to care that Bones can see all of this. There’s some excuse out there that can fix it, but he can’t get himself to focus, plays through everything the name brings up, all at once, Sam’s last day at home and the wind in his hair and having the Sunday school teacher/booking officer at juvie sigh the name he’d already decided wasn’t his anymore.

Bones calls out just as Jim lets the door slam shut behind him, and there’s no way, logically, that he was planning to add that extra syllable, but Jim hears it anyway, the sound of his old life catching up with him.

He goes straight to the bar. It’s four pm and he’s at a bar and it’s just another way enlisting hasn’t provided the distance it was meant to. Two beers in, he realizes he’s messed up and gone to their regular bar and  _that’s_  new, isn’t it, worrying that someone will come looking. He nurses the third a long time, not hopeful, he decides, but apprehensive.

Bones doesn’t come; an inch of beer left and an hour down and he hasn’t come, which is fine, which is to be expected, which shouldn’t feel nearly as bad as it does.

Jim orders another beer and gets over it. He got a year and a half of something he decided not to need the summer he turned twelve, and it was nice but he’s always known better, known this is the sort of luxury reserved for other people. In a week they’ll probably be going out for drinks again, a little more distantly, more carefully, Bones navigating around Jim’s trapdoors and tripwires, Jim reminding himself that they are classmates, drinking buddies, friends, even, but not whatever he thought, not as strong as he thought.

“On the house,” the bartender says, close to an hour later, plunking down a glass of bourbon next to Jim’s row of empties. “For your friend,” she adds warningly, and nods toward the door, where Bones is standing, scanning the room. Jim hunches down in his seat without thinking about it, but he hasn’t even bothered to position himself in a corner, and Bones’ eyes catch on him before he can move more than a few inches.

He wanted Bones to come but now he doesn’t understand why he did, why Bones came or why he wanted it, decides this is the sort of thing he can get through if he just keeps himself together, plays the part, like he’s not tensing with every step Bones takes. “Aw, Sarah, I’m hurt. You never comp  _my_  drinks.”

“Cause less property damage and I’ll think about it. He shows up, mostly keeps you in line; I think that’s worth a free drink or two.” She moves the glass a little farther away from him and walks off to deal with, as she’s put it, less destructive customers.

“Hey, Jim.” And maybe Bones puts a special emphasis on that one syllable, maybe he doesn’t.

“Hey.” Jim smirks, feels it stretch a bit tight across his face and takes a breath, lets himself fall into the persona that’s become so close to natural now, even if he still can’t look at Bones directly for more than a second or two. “Sorry for running out on you earlier. Had a date I’d forgotten about, you know how it is.”

“Right,” Bones drawls, draws it out just long enough to make sure Jim’s aware he’s full of shit. But then he softens a little, which somehow means an even deeper frown, lines spiderwebbing out from his lips. “Sorry about, uh, keeping you.”

“No, it’s.” He can’t find anything to do with his hands other than tear the label off one of his bottles, which is louder than he wants it to be, somehow; even in the crowded bar he can hear the glue coming unstuck from glass. “You couldn’t have known. I didn’t tell you.”

“So we’re—you’re all right?”

And those are obviously,  _obviously_ , two completely different questions, so Jim takes a second to think. He feels like he ought to be able to come up with something better than, “Don’t worry about it.” Because obviously all Bones does is worry, particularly about Jim. True to form, Bones rolls his eyes.

“Because your judgment’s always been so reliable.”

“I’ll show you reliable.” He flags Sarah down and orders three shots, considers sliding one to Bones but doesn’t.

He does them all one after another, relishes how emphatic the sound is when he slams each glass down, how it momentarily drowns out Bones’ disapproval and curiosity. “It’s nothing, what I used to go by when I was younger. I’m just—not that kid anymore.” He stares down at the bar, uses his sleeve to to buff away a smudge until it gleams. “Frank used to call me Jimmy. Sam was never ‘Sammy.’” He snorts, despite himself, at the thought of how that would have gone over. “I guess because I was the good one.”  _Guess_ , delivered unconvincingly, as if that fact hasn’t been the driving force of the last fifteen years of his life.

“You were the  _good_  one?” Bones says, incredulous, like it’s impossible to believe there was ever a time when Jim Kirk was anything but this, which is the point, that Jim Kirk was born speeding down an Iowa road, or that Jim Kirk crawled newly spawned out of a quarry and the first thing he did was mouth off to a cop.

“Like I said, not that kid anymore.”

“If you ever wanted to talk about it—” The words come slowly, like Bones is having to force them out, and Jim snorts. “I mean it.”

“Naw, I’d never do that to you, and I  _certainly_ wouldn’t do it to me. I’ve seen your bedside manner.”

“Jim—”

“It was a bad moment, but it’s over. Seriously, it’s just a name. Now,” he gestures to the glass untouched in front of Bones, “are you gonna drink that?”

He tries to know his limits, generally, saves his worst drinking for when he’s alone, but Bones is here and glaring at him because he won’t  _talk about it_ and he hates that name, hates that maybe he can’t keep his new life separate from his old one. So he keeps going, and as the night drags on, he lets himself list slightly to the right, slumps against Bones and feels his eyes drifting shut longer and longer each time.

“All right,” Bones grunts, pushing Jim upright. “Let’s get you back.”

“All right.” He goes along with it peaceably, lets Bones haul him up and support half his weight as they walk, only comes to his senses when he realizes he’s leaning instinctively into Bones’ touch. “I’m fine, I can walk on my own.”

And maybe he drifts a little closer as the walk drags on, lets their arms brush against each other and accidentally strays into Bones’ path more than once, but that’s nothing. The third time he almost trips Bones and gets no response but rolled eyes and a steadying hand, he stops walking entirely. Bones makes it a few feet before realizing and turning back for him.

"What’re you—"

"You’re a lot nicer than you pretend to be," he says, and makes a point of looking Bones in the eyes for the first time all night.

“You’re imagining that.”

“No, you’re. You’re just really  _good_. You complain but at the end of the day, you show up. And I know I don’t make it easy.”

“You don’t.” It feels a little like being suckerpunched, having Bones say that, even though anyone who spent more than two minutes with them could see it’s true. “Not half as hard as you think, either. Now come on.” 

“Ringing endorsement,” he says, and turns away so Bones can’t see him smiling.

“Don’t whine. It’s not appealing.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

The walk passes easily because he’s distracted by his own thoughts, gets caught up in his head and in how badly he wants to express to Bones what it means that he’s around, still. It must last longer than he thinks, a drawn-out silence punctuated by the drag of his feet, because he says, “Most people don’t,” and Bones just looks at him like he’s spouting nonsense.

“They don’t what?”

“Show up.” They stop, and he wonders whether it’s that shocking, realizes belatedly that they’re at Bones’ apartment. Bones is the responsible one, but that only goes so far, is really only true because he’s being compared to Jim Kirk, so he’s had enough to drink that he messes up entering the code he’s had since they started at the academy (which is, Jim likes to whine, a major security flaw, and apparently useless besides).

“I’ll let you use the bed this time,” Bones says once they’re inside, and nudges Jim so that he topples over onto the mattress. Usually staying here is like a race to see whether he can pass out on the bed faster than Bones can stop him. Maybe he’d feel bad about it, except his dorm is barely five streets over and Bones has insisted on not letting him go alone more than once because he’d “choke on his own vomit,” like he hasn’t been surviving on his own for years. (Bones says it’s sheer luck, and maybe he’s right. Probably. He asked once if Jim was even trying to keep himself alive, and the answer was what’s it’s been for over a decade: no, but he’s not trying to die either, which ought to be close enough. Now, as he squints into the glare of Bones’ desk lamp, the answer is no, but maybe he could learn to.)

“Keep to your side; last time I took the floor and my back hurt for a week.”

“Yeah, yeah, I keep forgetting you’re old,” he says into the pillow he’s claimed, and moves over.

“Thanks for your sympathy,” Bones huffs. When he gets into the bed, he pointedly faces away from Jim and holds himself so stiffly that Jim’s about to offer to sleep on the floor when he speaks up. “I’ll always show up, you know. Even when I’m not completely clear on what I’m showing up for.” He says it all in that very particular Bones way of his, gruff and almost resentful like Jim has dragged it out of him somehow, beaten him or threatened his family, a metaphorical phaser pressed to his head. “Every time.”

And there’s nothing to say to that, really, so Jim waits about a minute and fakes a snore.


End file.
